There I didn’t see flowers around them anywhere. I didn’t see pink or green or burgundy or blue, the colors I have in my view. No scented candles in platinum holders to please their senses while reading. No reading. Their faces were gleaming with tears. I have more in my bathroom than an Afghani has in her lifetime I think as I sink down into my steaming hot tub on a day colder than me. I am a Queen in America compared to most women in the world. Although my medicines may be expensive, although the paint on my house and car peel, although my windows let some winter slip in through loose seals -- I can imagine healing. I can dream up a color my house might become. I have running water, a toilet that flushes if you hold the handle just right and a store around the corner I’ll get to to buy a newer improved one before company comes. I keep the company of men and I know a man who will help me or two and the men I know won’t stone me, don’t cut me, don’t burn me, don’t collect dismembered human hands as souvenirs. They let me make them laugh and teach them things I know without too much protest. The roast bakes as I lather and not for the first time but again I know being born an American was a gift -- that if this isn’t heaven where I am compared to where they are in Afghanistan then there is no such thing as happy, there is no such thing as content.
	Marylisa DeDomenicis

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